Saturday, October 24, 2009

Constructor: Paula Gamache

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SHE-RA (48A: Her alter ego is Princess Adora) —

She-Ra is a fictional character and the heroine in the Filmation cartoon and series of toys produced by Mattel called She-Ra: Princess of Power. She is the alter ego of Princess Adora and the twin sister of He-Man (Prince Adam). She-Ra was intended to appeal to young girls in the same way that He-Man appealed to young boys. // She-Ra is introduced in the animated movie The Secret of the Sword as Force Captain Adora, an agent of the Evil Horde that rules the planet Etheria. She discovers that she is the long-lost sister of Prince Adam of Eternia, having been stolen by the Horde's leader, Hordak, as a baby. She is granted the Sword of Protection, which parallels He-Man's Sword of Power, gaining the power to transform into She-Ra, her secret identity. (wikipedia)

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Yet another week where the Saturday puzzle takes me far less time than the Friday. I hope this Bizarro Crossworld situation doesn't hold much longer, although having Saturday's puzzle come as a kind of relief is nice, in its way. Today's puzzle is freakishly heavy on the names, particularly the musical names (of which I count at least five). TINA TURNER (15A: Singer born Anna Mae Bullock) over EDDIE MONEY (17A: "Baby Hold On" hitmaker, 1978) was very easy for me — my peak pop music knowledge runs from about '78-'86, and both EDDIE and TINA were huge in that period. XTINA (30A: Singer Aguilera, self-referentially) over SPADER (33A: "The Practice" and "Boston Legal" Emmy winner) a bit tougher, if only because I've never ever seen XTINA as an expression of "Christina" (SPADER was actually a gimme). Is "XTINA" an album title? No... "referred to herself," like in writing? When does she write her name for everyone to see? That "XTINA" bit merits barely a mention in the Wikipedia write-up, though apparently she has a tattoo of "XTINA" somewhere on her body, so I guess that gives the answer some permanence. It's easy to infer "XTINA" from "Christina," but that's a pretty damned obscure factoid. Aguilera was recently a guest judge on "Project Runway." TINA and XTINA in same grid ... not sure about that.

I'm guessing that if people had any real problems with names today, they came around the SHE-RA-over-YANN section. I was lucky enough to be able to guess SHE-RA, Princess of Power. YANN (54A: "Life of Pi" author _____ Martel) is a name I put out of my mind (happily) as I did not care for that book at all. Everyone (it seemed) loved it and I just didn't get what all the fuss was about. Don't even remember if I finished (I'm betting not). In the end, I was saved by the SEA HAG (42D: Ugly Dungeons & Dragons figure). How ironic. Wait. Maybe I was saved by Chrissie HYNDE (49D: Chrissie of the Pretenders). Yeah, I like that story better.

Other trouble spots for me included the SW south of BROAD. None of those Downs wanted to come Down and play. I couldn't parse 34D: Creation of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 at all. I thought "how does the CREATION of the Act have a name?" But no, the ACT was doing the creating, specifically creating the JOB CORPS, which I got only because I've got a good deal of French under my belt. PEUR (58A: Fear, to François) = gimme. AIR DRIES (35D: Hangs up after agitating?) had one of those wicked clues that look like nonsense until you get the right answer, and then seem obvious. Wanted CLOSE OUT to have something to do with CLOTHES, possibly (36D: Bargain hunter's bonanza). Last stand was in the NE, specifically the "T" and "M" in POSTMARK (14D: Prepare for delivery). Couldn't make since of 26A: Glass top (rim) — top of *a* glass, not a top *made* of glass — and so thought [Prepare for delivery] might have something to do with a van making a delivery ("... PARK?") or a ship delivering passengers to shore ("...BARK?"). Eventually decided that WILT was right at 21A: Word before thou, and then ran letters in my head to get the (now obvious) "M" in POSTMARK.

What else?

1A: High definition storage medium (Blu Ray Disc) — have been talking about getting a player recently, and was actually looking at some players yesterday, so this medium was fresh on my mind. Like the techno angle today with this answer and TREOS (32A: Alternatives to iPhones) and even TEEVEE (41D: Nonhuman baby sitter?). Only real problem is that with iPhones and iPod in the clues today (23D: iPod attachments => EAR BUDS), puzzle starts to look a little bit like it's shilling for Mac (an old accusation that was more common when IMAC was a more common answer ... what happened to IMAC, gridwise? They still make them, you know). Speaking of shilling for Mac, I'm off to the Apple Store in Syracuse today (mmmm, maybe tomorrow) so they can help me set up my new laptop / transfer data from this steam-driven beast I'm working on now. Half my blogging time these days (or so it seems) is spent waiting for this damned machine to catch up with me. No more.

29D: Prussian prohibition ("Nein!") — I guessed this easily enough, but ... Prussia? Is that still a place?

11D: Old World duck (smew) – from the pre-Shortzian Crosswordese vault comes this oddity. If you wait long enough, you will eventually see SMEW's "Old World" cousin, a blackbird known as ANI. Appropriately, both answers are now Old World Crossword Fill (for the most part). [Dang! I screwed up — ANI is explicitly a "New World cuckoo"; new, old ... I knew it was one of those worlds]

31D: Soviet agency created from Rosta (Tass) — TASS is a "Soviet agency" that I know of, and I figured it out from crosses. Other common crossword fill hiding behind toughish late-week clues includes AD IN (19A: Situation before many a game is won), MEESE (22A: Cabinet chief between Smith and Thornburgh), and SDS (27A: It spawned the Weather Underground Org.).

Bizarre bit: While I was doing the puzzle last night, and just after I had given up on 49D, Jay Leno was trivia quizzing guest Colin Firth. Q: Who was the only non-British member of the Pretenders? Answer? 49D, of course. How's that for "divine" intervention? Too bad I had just googled it...

I totally bombed. Rex's comment about the SE held true for me. YANN - WTF. HYNDE - didn't know. SEA HAG was OLD HAG first. SHE-RA - no clue. "Busy" as a clue for ORNATE would have been clever semi-misdirection in a region less opaque to me. In this case it just added to my misery. Errors in the SW were just that - my errors. Started with CUBA as a guess for 6D, left the B (YUBA CITY is real and in N. Cal., close enough to where Chávez did his thing), and opted for spelling CRYER with an I insted of a Y. Never heard of EDDIE MONEY and was happy enough with EDDIE BONEI, of whom NONE of us have heard.

Several googles, mistakes left uncorrected, I am abashed, Ms. Gamache's puzzles are usually fun to solve, and so would this have been, except for the overabundance of names I just. did. not. know.

Hmmm.. not sure knowing SHE-RA is a worthy goal for this old lady. Why are we not filling minds with, at the least, real people's stories?

grouse, grouse...

I really chimed in to say: in my courses on Biblical history and theology, I used Xian as an abbreviation...so when I got the X going down, I realzed Xina would work. Rather enjoyed getting that--since it did not happen a lot with this puzzle!

For the second day in a row (unprecedented for me), I finished FRI-SAT, and enthusiastically ran here without checking my answers, and for the second day in a row, had a stupid error that easily could have been avoided! I'm not complaining...

The heavy music fill was what brought this to a doable level for me - I think I'm slightly older than Rex, but one of our homecoming themes from the early 80's was EDDIE MONEY's "Two Tickets to Paradise." I knew the TINA TURNER answer immediately - not sure why, and the PEETE SEEGER fell with only a few letters. Chrissie HYNDE is a NE Ohio girl, where I HAIL FROM, so all those provided a nice starting point.

@The Corgi of Mystery ... I thought that Xtina had to be a play on Xmas. Thanks for verifying.

I got SHERA, but never realized that it's SHE-RA until coming here.

I love the Pretenders so HYNDE was a gimme, making that part of the puzzle very doable.

I solved all but the NW. Just call me stupid. I wouldn't let CUBA go and had ATEAM .... so, in case you didn't know, a high-def storage medium is an ALURAC DISC. What's frustrating is I know who EDDIE MONEY is ... but just let him be EDDIE BONEY. Hmmmmm .....

My dictionary says CRYER is an archaic spelling of "crier," hence the "old" in the clue. It could also have been clued as actor Jon, but Paula and Will were probably glad for non-name clueing options given how many (delicious) names were in the grid.

I don't know any Aguilera songs, having seen her only on a network New Year's Eve show—but between Entertainment Weekly and the Go Fug Yourself site, I know she's Xtina. Really not clear on how she's different from Lady Gaga, though.

Finished with three write-overs: OILCAN before OILGUN, BIKINIS before INNINGS, and META goal before SETA, and one wrong letter, at the crossing of HYNDE and YANN, since HINDE and IANN both sounded perfectly reasonable and perfectly unknown to me.

Enjoyable puzzle except the Y of Hynde and Yann was a Natick for me (and I ended up with an I instead of a Y). To be accurate for me, it would have to be some other obscure town, since I actually live in a town abutting Natick, MA (on the Boston Marathon route).

Heck, PEUR is a common-enough French word that I know it, and I know almost no French (took one year and audited the 2nd semester and didn't work at it much therefore). Sounds like a slasher movie tag line--"How many words do you know for FEAR???"

Rex's mental universe and mine don't seem to overlap much; I found this one fairly Challenging and no mistake. Still, several million points out of 10 for the lack of sports clues (BTEAMS doesn't count).

I know virtually no German, but is NEIN a prohibition? I thought it just meant "No" as in "Sprechen sie Deutsch? Nein".

@XMAN I think "garden plot" was meant, but SOD doesn't really "thicken" it. Peat moss maybe. Or maybe adding sod to a plot of ground thickens it by making the top level farther away from the center of the earth? Weak, but that's all I've got.

Not so much fun today.Nyet for nein made that little area a real mess. I'm not up on my cell phones so the Y seemed plausible.No reason in my little galaxy to EVER know she-ra and I don't care. Don't care about Xtina either.The only sea hag I know is from Popeye. Time for chores and errands with Wait, Wait and Car Talk on the radio.

Easy-medium? Not in my world. Definitely a challenging puzzle for me today and that's with the HYNDE/YANN Natick. An "I" seemed plausible. And I arrived at HINDE after a previous spelling.

@SethG: Agreed that the lyrics are far older than the birth of Pete Seeger.

Started yesterday's puzzle and saved it to finish later. Looks to be quite a stumper. Husband was ready to go out 4-wheeling in the Jeep. Hmmm...take the Jeep out into the desert on a beautiful 80 degree day vs. sit in a darkened room lit by the eerie glow of the laptop? Now that's a stumper.

Utterly loved it. When you compare it to yesterday's clearly-Auto-filled snooze-a-thon, this one was brimming with freshness and lively entries. Just when I thought I'd exhausted the multi-word phrases in the long entries, there'd be others in the crossings. Bravo, Paula.

What happened to the Natick principle in the SE? Or as the young are prone to say WTF? SHE-RA, HYNDE, YANN and SEAHAG? Thank goodness for good old PETESEEGER or I'd have been lost. I must be old, I knew Tina Turner as well. One google required for SPADER, but all in all a nice workout for Saturday morning. Mechanics talk about grease guns but not oil guns, by the way.@ bookmark 19a parses as AD IN from tennis, but you knew that. Thanks PG and everyone else.

I asked the step twins who Aguilera was and lovely wife responded oh XTINA.

And, BEDABLE was a WTF moment pour moi and it is mildly interesting to note Hugh Hefner is featured in NYT today.

Boring story alert

My son was a big He-Man fan. One of his Aunts (in a fit of feminism) gave him She-Ra. Son thought SHE-RA would be a good match for Stinkor (villain covered with green felt with an odor). On a car trip he and a friend held a wedding in the back seat.

Note: We were going to Parkers the best maple sugar and pancake place in New Hampshire.

The ceremony ended when SHE-RA bit off Stinkors head (kids version of Natl. Geographic featured the Praying Mantis that month). This resulted in Stinkor being thrown under the front seat and remaining there for about two weeks. The tell tale odor of Stinkor was still in the car when I traded it in for a "fresher model" some years later, Thus I will always remember She-Ra.

This Friday-Saturday sequence has me feeling good about my week in crossworld. No Googles yesterday and only one today. In spite of HYNDE and PETESEEGER being gimmes for me, I was stymied in the SE by SHERA/YANN/SEAHAG and the PEUR/STRS crossing was a bit of a guess. I didn't think an OILGUN was a real thing. But having just Googled it, I see that it is. I used to use grease guns when I worked as a millwright in a coke plant during summers in my college years. So I know they exist.

I'VE BEEN HAD! Well, by my own crazy brain... I was sure there was such a person as TINA TUCKER, and she messed me up for a bit, though I recovered. JACOBIN, PEUR and TREOS helped complete the whole west. But the YANN/SHERA neighborhood was, as Rex predicted, impossible.

The whitehouse chief of staff is not the chief of the cabinet and is not even a member of the cabinet, strictly speaking. If he were he would be subject to senate confirmation. He is said to have, on the Whitehouse website, "the status of Cabinet-rank." And I guess that is good enough for a Saturday.

@xman @norm -- How about SOD as something that can thicken a plot of ground that is covered only thinly, patchily with grass. That works for me.

Could not make heads or tails of this last night. What a difference a good night's sleep can make. Took a fresh look this morning, ripped out all the incorrect answers, and finished in about 30 minutes.

Like many, I struggled with the SE corner, but I knew SHE-RA from watching cartoons with my daughter years ago and I thought SOD had an amusing clue. I was just left with that pesky "Y" crossing at HYNDE and YANN, both of which were unknown to me. After running through all my vowels 3 or 4 times, I suddenly remembered to try "Y." Looked better than anything else and turned out to be right.

Great puzzle Paula. You almost had me on this one. Enjoyed the workout immensely (well, this morning more than last night).

Good, fresh puzzle, and not girly, with the innings which I also thought were bikinis.

The many names caused me problems, as well. Had Cuba, oilpan, ESPN for toga, and while I could visualize his smug face, I didn't know Spaders name. Xtine was a guess that made sense. Forgot about Yann although I bought the book for my son. Love Jacobin, berserk, and "Lee side".

I think it is a night table or a bedside table, bedtable sounds odd.@dk: I think it's beddable LOL!

@Elaine. Totally in synch with you on this one. A few clever clues, but generally too many cute puns. For the first time in ages had to resort to Google for the arcane (to my generation) Yann and Eddie Money pop idols, and the even more "never heard of" game creatures.

Oil gun??? Oil can and grease gun are the proper terms when it comes to mechanics and their gadgets. BTW, gadgets is inappropriate when referring to basic tools in widespread use.

@foodie ... sorry ... I guess that was a little esoteric, wasn't it? I hail from the part of the country where the steel industry once dominated. Coke is derived from coal when it is cooked at very high temperatures in a furnace (see 28A Converted from coal via distillation in yesterday's puzzle). The hydrocarbons byproducts of this process are used in the manufacture of various steel products. A millwright maintains machinery in mills. I was actually a millwright helper and, as such, I got to do the crap jobs the millwrights didn't want to do ... like greasing the doors on the coke furnace (think hell on earth). I'm sure I'm still carrying around parts of that coke oven in my lungs. Truth be told, I spent most of my time hiding from foremen since they really didn't have enough work for me to do. I got an up close and personal look at how the unions and management colluded to kill the American steel industry in the late 70s.

@ruthIf you took ANY French instruction, then I don't think you are a fair judge of "commonly known" French words. I know quite a bit of vocab--from wide reading, movies with subtitles, etc. PEUR is not one of the words I know.

@macha ha...I had THONGS for 3D until the crosses made me change to UNDIES

Hand up for CUBA...

and if Ms. Aguilera was doing it right, she'd just have Xina. The X stands for CHRIST, as in Xmas. See?

Easy-medium works for me, but I was familiar with most of the names (didn't know YANN and saw how to parse SHERA on a post solve google). The West side went pretty quickly but I had to stare at SE like many of you. HYNDE was a gimmie but it took a while to see ORNATE. Liked the puzzle, lots of clever cluing and interesting answers.

@Elaine, @jeff in chicago -- I think both your answers pass Saturday muster. Department heads are not usually called 'chiefs', but the names made clear enough to anyone (but yours truly) that we were talking about the head of the justice department. And the AG is often called the 'chief law enforcement officer of the United States' though some insist, vehemently, that that title belongs to the president.

@mac, right you are. Attended a FETE for a great local band The Pines PRESS HERE last night and then saw Cedric Burnside at Palmers (another local hot spot). Suffice to say this morning I feel like a Corgi who took one to many a spin in the dryer

NY (albeit in Mpls MN) moment at Palmers was listening to a lively discussion on the comparative rescue abilities of Lassie vs. Flicka (from the TEEVEE show My Friend Flicka).

Like Rex, I read at Life of Pi but gave up on it once the Tiger entered the scene. Unlike Rex, the odd name YANN remained with me and is the oddest neon I ever remember having. Also knew Chrissy HYNDE so no Natick for me.

I had all of the North to the TREOS SPADER line but most of the South was in pieces. Finally got the SW when BROAD produced JOBCORPS, leaving only the SE remaining. I finally knitted together the last section from the SOD/DANDER crossing with SELLBYDATE my last entry. I was surprised when the bell rung advising me the puzzle was complete, the first time in a while I've been surprised that way.

loved this puzzle! some great great clues. My favs were 1D, 8D, 25D. A few AHA/OHO moments for sure! the whole thing put me in a great mood.My sister gave me Life of Pi for Christmas a few years ago but I have to confess I never read it ... Kept wanting the iphone alternative to be OREO! and embarrassed I knew EDDIEMONEY right away ...

This week's relative difficulty ratings. See my 7/30/2009 post for an explanation. In a nutshell, the higher the ratio, the higher this week's median solve time is relative to the average for the corresponding day of the week.

All solvers (this week's median solve time, average for day of week, ratio, percentile, rating)

One advantage of being late to the show is that one may see a larger picture emerging--in the present case, the numerous occasions this puzzle offered to get a single square wrong when both answers crossing there were unknown. In my case, I'm in the CUBA camp, even though GLENN Ford in 3:10 to Yuma was still on my mind form yesterday. And I somehow forgot to go back into the taxi line. It adds up to a fair Saturday, I guess; and with a name like Gamache, one should expect some French...

I checked the names of the famous radicals from the French Revolution I know backwards and forwards w/o being able to find a 7-letter one ending in IN--needed more crosses to finally get JACOBIN. HYNDE was a gimme, on the other hand, b/c I adored her and her group. And I'm proud that I guessed XTINA by drawing an analogy with Xmas.

I believe NEIN, as well as NO, can imply a prohibition as I indicated in my earlier post and comment to @poc (who may have missed my intent with " ... NO! to teevee" as an answer to his previous question).

Since my German is very rusty, I won't embarass myself trying to get the syntax correct "auf Deutsch", but I believe NEIN, as a response to "Is it allowed that I speak English here?" would be a prohibition.

@Babs ... "ad in" is a tennis term. It's the score after the server wins a deuce point ("ad" is short for "advantage"). If the server's opponent wins the deuce point, the score is "ad out". In either case, if the player who has the ad wins the next point, they win the game.

Starting with "no parking": In German, it would not be "nein Parken", that's just not German. The literal translation of "no parking" would be "kein Parken", but that's not used very often--what you see most frequently is "Parken verboten"--and that IS as clear a prohibition as they come.

It all comes down to what one considers a prohibition. To me, "nein" (or "no" for that matter), taken by itself, is not a prohibition, as the clue claims. It needs context to work that way, as in your "no to teevee" example--take the "to teevee" out, and you no longer have a prohibition.

Well, no harm was really done as everyone, including me, understood the clue (I did hesitate a bit, though, trying to find a German 4-letter word that would be more clearly a prohibition). All I wanted to do with my remark is give ...jones moral support.

@Stan, I appreciate the warm sentiments about people with food avatars, and admire your willingness to embrace one of the more maligned foods. I even looked up rutabaga and strawberry, and discovered there is such a pie! Not sure I'll rush to make it, though : )

@sanfranman, hmmm I wonder if I've run into you in real life...

@ulrich and glitch, you're both right. Nein by itself is not a prohibition. The connection to the idea of forbidding something is more tenuous in German and French, specifically because NEIN (and NON) are not used in phrases like NO PARKING. But prohibition is one of its meanings in the right context, as Ulrich indicates. I've learned that by Saturday, I have to accept the kind of clue where the answer is a very specific case of a broader category, or holds under peculiar circumstances. See for example the DANDER/IRISH given to me earlier today.

@foodie: I don't know about strawberry and rutabaga pie, but I'm very partial to strawberry and rhubarb pie (another vegetable treated with derision here a while ago). If you smother the pie with whipped cream (real--no substitute) to counteract the tartness of the rhubarb, it's delicious!

@SCOTUS addict: Welcome back! Have you had any triumphs at SCOTUS lately?

I made my shortribs with not just celery, onion and carrots, but two small chopped (and later pureed) turnips, in addition to the red wine, stock and herbs. Not sure if I would do it again, though. It was a little overpowering.

Helps if you actually know how to spell "Nein," because if you just vaguely know the word, but don't know how to spell it, you end up with "Jacoben," which also looks reasonable if you don't know any better. Plus "Trios," which, again, seems perfectly plausible if you don't actually know....etc, etc. (Sorry if etc. is crosswordese.) That was the major screw-up area for me.

Quite proud of self for getting the long acrosses in the SE. Ive been had. Sell by date. Easy-peasy part. Too late at night to remember what Rex said about that.

Foodie, Ulrich, et al: The words no, non, nein are definite prohibitions. If I say to Daisy (my beloved pooch), "No!", it is a very specific prohibition of a particular action. If you were to ask a German police officer if it were permissible to park where it says "Parken Verboten," he would reply, "Nein," with the clear implication that parking is, indeed, prohibited.

Scotus addict: Y'all can go on and on about it (and I get the point) (actually, it's me going on and on about something of so little importance that the impulse to respond is fading away and I can't remember...) ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

@XMAN: if you were to ask the German policeman "Can I park here?" and he replied "NEIN", is it still a prohibition? As @Ulrich and @Foodie say, interpretation can often depend strongly on context. There's nothing definite about it without that context. About all you can say about NEIN in itself is that it's a negative.

A word to the wise: when in Ireland, it might be best to avoid using "Irish" for "temper" ("dander" is fine and is quite common). "Welshing on a bet" and "getting off Scot-free" are similarly not well-regarded in the respective countries. I'm just saying :-)

From zis corner of ze continent, PEUR et YANN were gimmes. But had EXPIRY DATE and then BEST BY before SELL BY kicked in. And in the SE, my grease monkey had an AIRGUN for the longest time while shoulders were PAVED and some Amazon.com orders were COD. Zut alors.

I came here to find out why on earth DANDER means Irish, and now that I know, I can honestly say that I've never heard anyone use the word DANDER or the word Irish to mean temper. If this definition of Irish exists, wouldn't irish be spelled with a lowercase first i? I remember learning that when we use the word english to mean spin put on a ball, we should not capitalize it, because we aren't referring to the language, and it's therefore not a proper noun. Obviously, the first letters of all clues are capitalized, so my point is moot, but I am curious now as to whether or not I should capitalize it if I ever decide to write or type this asburd (to me) phrase in my lifetime. Anyway, I had to say that I was pleased that the first things I entered (STOP and ANDGO) turned out to be right. Also, I've known for a few years that Miss Aguilera refers to herself in writing as XTINA, so that one was oddly enough a gimme for me.

CLANCY LOWERED THE BOOM (Hy Heath / John Lange) Dennis Day Also recorded by : Petula Clark; Bing Crosby; Dan Dailey; Hit Crew; Donald Peers; The Shamrock Singers. Now Clancy was a peaceful man If you know what I mean, The cops picked up the pieces After Clancy left the scene, He never looked for trouble That's a fact you can assume, But never-the-less when trouble would press. Clancy lowered the boom! Chorus: Oh, that Clancy, Oh that Clancy Whenever they got his Irish up, Clancy lowered the boom! O'Leary was a fighting man, They all knew he was tough, He strutted 'round the neighborhood, A-shootin' off his guff, He picked a fight with Clancy, Then and there he sealed his doom, Before you could shout "O'Leary, look out!" Clancy lowered the boom! Chorus: Oh, that Clancy, Oh that Clancy Whenever they got his Irish up, Clancy lowered the boom! O'Hollihan delivered ice To Misses Clancy's flat, He'd always linger for a while, To talk of this and that, One day he kissed her, Just as Clancy walked into the room, Before you could say the time of day, Clancy lowered the boom! Chorus: Oh, that Clancy, Oh that Clancy Whenever they got his Irish up, Clancy lowered the boom! Sure it was the most beautiful sight you ever did see when Clancy Lowered The Boom (Contributed by RumandCocaCola44 - March 2005)